Review: iSwing App

October 16, 2010

I recently added the iSwing app to my list of iPhone apps. I’ve always searched for a way to perform swing analysis easily, quickly, and inexpensively, but I never could find a good system. The iSwing app meets some of these needs, but certainly not all.

My current iPhone is an older version–3g, as opposed to the newest 4g and slightly newer 3gs. The old 3g iPhone did not include a video recorder, but that was no problem for the iSwing app, which has its own method of taking “video.” By recording successive shots of pictures, the iSwing app puts together a frame-by-frame analysis of the swing

Shots are recorded in the swing diary, shown below.

The iSwing app includes the ability to perform analysis on the image. Users can click to show a lagged frame view or draw in lines for planar analysis. The shots below show video playback of my swing including the analysis lines (nice and parallel =)).

Moreover, because the iSwing app has a frame-by-frame approach to video recording, it is capable of displaying the frame-by-frame swing progression, just like the pros in golf magazines.

While the iSwing app has the potential to be extremely powerful, there are some major drawbacks. Using it can be a real pain. Ideally, you need another person holding the iPhone while you make your swing, but who among us bring other people to the range on a regular basis? The iSwing app does have a timer so that you can prop your iPhone up, press record, and go hit the ball (3 beeps, then a recording sound). However, propping up an iPhone is more difficult than it sounds when the user is trying to figure out where he will be standing. The timer only goes up to 8 seconds, which is not nearly enough time walk up to the ball, set up to the target, and go through a full swing routine. Moreover, if the iPhone is in vibrate mode as opposed to ring mode, the iSwing app will not even let you know when it is about to take/taking video.

There are other drawbacks. The frame rate of the iSwing app is fairly slow. Thus, with my swing, I end up having only 3 or maybe 4 shots out of 16 that show my actual swing. The others include time setting up to the ball and time holding the finish.

While the analysis is very powerful, I find myself avoiding the use of the iSwing app when I am at the range by myself. It could be a very useful tool if trying to illustrate someone’s swing flaws, but it would require at least another person to hold it and probably a faster frame rate.